Nature of the Valley: Pa.’s swallows star of Mother Nature’s flying circus

Childhood was very different when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. In the summer, when school was out of session, I didn’t have a steady stream of electronic images to keep myself amused, so I turned to simpler pleasures. I spent a lot of time lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the sky and exercising my imagination. My two favorite occupations were imagining what the shapes of the clouds represented and swallow watching. I delighted in watching the aerial maneuvers of these acrobatic birds. As a young boy, I liked to fantasize that they were fighter planes engaged in the Battle of Britain diving and twisting through the sky.